


Living With a Killing

by Olliebee



Series: What They Made You [2]
Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 16:15:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11604222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olliebee/pseuds/Olliebee





	1. Chapter 1

Death was something that always intrigued me. It’s something the living will never understand. We only begin to truly learn about it when it comes for us, and even then, our lesson is cut short.

I was five when she died. I miss her every day, even though I didn’t know her. I felt like I did, though. Like I knew her best. She was my first home.

I don’t remember how she looked or how she smelled, but I remember how she felt. Electrifying. Alive in every sense of the word. Sparks buzzed around under her skin and the ones under my own communicated with her. They remember her, they yearn for her. Everything I know about her comes from them.

I don’t know if I would be ready to learn the truth about why she’s no longer with me. I wish I could find out where she is now. Something with so much energy contained within…where did it all go when she relinquished it?

Every time I see a lightbulb or the screen of a phone, I can’t imagine her becoming that. Something so small and replaceable, she was more than that. She’s crackling clouds, a bolt of electricity that divides the sky, the torrential downpour that follows. It’s so much power. I’ve felt it. I am it. It makes me question what in the world was so much more, that it could kill her? What if it wasn’t something, but someone? Are they still out there?

All I could hope for, was that I would find out on this mission. Destiny came to me one night, telling me she saw me getting everything I could ever want.

I knew what she meant. Most would envision money or fame. I knew I would figure out who my mother was and the rest of the gifts she left for me.

She also said that the mission would involve healing—it became muddled in that aspect she said. Physical healing, possibly, but relationship healing, and not just my own.

This had never happened in Eden before. Missions were never hand-picked in such a way. We were chosen out of necessity and urgency.

I’d heard about Transigen. How our founders fought artificial mutation, and escaped human weaponization.

But now our concerns have shifted. Human weaponization was still a very real threat—yet due to our own cause—something new and more sinister arose.

I was born out of love. Two mutant humans who joined together to create me, a physical manifestation. I was born into a world trying to contain such a thing from happening. Trying to end mutants once and for all. Food that poisoned us, water that eroded us…

When we ended that movement, we didn’t know it would launch an even worse one.

They call it shopping. It’s treated like picking out an expensive piece of equipment. A car that must be a certain shade of blue, with a state of the art engine, and heated leather seats.

They shop for their babies. We normalized mutation so much, that people were electing to artificially mutate in utero. A population that once hated us, was trying to become us.

DNA from original mutants was still on file, even DNA after weaponization. These were being used, every day to make children.

Our missions involved terminating weaponized children, destroying archives of weaponized DNA, and fighting against the movement of designer babies.

A mission that was about myself came as a surprise. There was to be minimal intervention, only giving me what I needed to progress. She was sure of it.

“You’ll make the right decisions, I know you will.”

As she left the room, I felt the crackling underneath my skin. It wasn’t in the way that it always was—almost negligible. This time, it felt like my first home.

********

 

I could smell the air as I began my trek through the forest. Rain. My skin was already begging for the first drop as it became dewy from the air’s wet heat. Humidity was my least favorite part of an impending storm. If I were here of my own volition, I’d stare at the magnificent sky, surrendering to the gray tint as the clouds began to communicate, crackling with electricity. I knew how they felt, the same electricity had flowed through my body many times before.

The first time we had become acquainted with each other, I felt at home. Any other person would have been frightened by the raw power of such a thing taking over their body. I was young. I didn’t know how to control it. But now we dance together, we work together, sometimes I feel like I’m the electricity and it is me. I don’t like to be away from it—I spent most of life away from it already. I couldn’t join with it right now, though. I had a task to complete.

 

I continued my mission on foot when the trail ended and I couldn’t push the Jeep much farther on the rougher terrain. I didn’t look forward to the walk, but the fact that rain was coming made the prospect seem better. It made it seem less lonely.

I was surrounded by vast amounts of foliage. Trees that reached to the sky, begging it to feed them. The sky rumbled in response, making a promise. They, along with the rain were my only company.

I had a vague idea of what I was sent to search for. The only instructions given to me were a set of coordinates as well as the cheeky little hint, “X marks the spot.”

A thunderous crackle rumbled from the sky as I looked at the printed note given to me. The ink slid off the paper as the first droplet hit it. Yet another reminder of the circumstances surrounding my mission. 

With another thunderous boom, the rain began to fall rapidly, feeding the forest around me, and erasing the note which I shoved into my pocket anyways.

As I walked, the rain calmed me, keeping me company and keeping me sane while I was on this mission alone, barely a clue of what I was looking for.

It seemed like this part was an advanced scavenger hunt. A tiny clue and a big piece of land. Finding things wasn’t necessarily my strong suit. I feel like things find me.

In the distance, I saw it, an X emerging from the ground. When I got close, I could finally see all of it. The sticks that had been bound together had grown mold, the rocks in the pile in front of it had become mossy, a brilliant green network connecting them all together. I was sure that this was it. This seemed to be the only sign of human interaction with this part of the forest.

As the rain continued to beat down on me, I opened the pack to see what had been provided for me. Surely this would give me a clue of what I was to do.

I laid out all the materials: A small shovel, gardening gloves, and the last object that help me piece it all together…a large bag. I unfolded it to see that it had a large zipper down the middle.

I was not here to dig up something, but someone. 

As my realization dawned on me, a vein of lightening divided the sky. Her eyes were on me, I felt it. My mother.

 


	2. Chapter 2

I remember the beating of my heart when I found my father’s suit. It was folded neatly and placed in his drawer, like a normal piece of clothing.

It was part of him I’d never seen before. Never been introduced to. This was the person I’d been begging to meet.

Did I dare reach out to feel what it was made of? I looked around the room, calmed down the fizzling in my body, and reached out.

“What are you doing?” His voice cut through the silence.

“Nothing, I’m just-”

“Going through my drawer. I thought I taught you to respect others. This isn’t respect.” He addressed me sternly.

My hand still hovered over the suit as I looked back at him. I wanted to reach out and touch it, to connect to it somehow. To connect to the part of him he refused to show me.

I turned my attention away from him, and before my tiny hand could satisfy my need in this act of defiance, he’d leapt across the room to catch my wrist.

“You’re curious about the wrong things, Dhoruba. You should be curious about the things you learn in school. I don’t even know why I hold onto this thing anymore. I’m going to ask Ariyah to get rid of it. Please, go finish your schoolwork.” He dismissed me.

Even though he was done with that part of his life. He still held onto it. I’d become curious about a new thing.

*******

I looked at the makeshift grave, trembling. Was I being curious about the wrong thing? Had Destiny seen me dig up my own mother? How would she look after all of these years?

My hand reached out, hovering over the rocks. My father wasn’t here to pull my wrist away. He wasn’t here to protect me from my mutant lineage. The new feeling swept over me, that I was in control of this. I would make the right choice.

My father had taught me to think about consequences. A habit instilled in me to this day. Could I handle what I was about to see? Would I be okay with these consequences?

Yes. Even in death, I wanted to see her. I wanted to touch her. I wanted her to know that I missed her every day. That I worked so hard to make it to this moment.

I could feel the electricity growing inside me, ready to dance with me. My skin crackled and roared, the webbing of my fingers creating a network of power.

I guided the electricity to the rocks, breaking the thick network of moss binding them together. They scattered apart, leaving only the ground underneath. The earthly barrier between her and I. One that would be broken—leaving only the spiritual one. The one that I was not forced to break yet.

I didn’t want to risk zapping the ground, destroying what was underneath. So, I slipped on the gardening gloves and began to chip away at her resting place.

********

The sun was beating down on him as held the tiny little hand in his large one. How was it possible to love something so much? In all of his years on this planet, he hadn’t experienced it until now. A father to a child.

But it was too late. In his heart, his sluggishly beating heart, he knew this was right. Even if he didn’t want it to be. Everybody he ever loved was hurt because of him. She didn’t deserve to follow that archetype.

She had a mutant family like he once did. She risked their lives and possibly her own to save his. She’d done enough already.

Even if he thought he would survive this, he’d tell her to go. She could make her own life. She could be happy. Right now, him dying in front of her, this was the last sad moment he wanted her life to have.

God, that sun was getting hot. Her face was blurring, and he was sure he was telling her she’d be okay. Maybe it had turned into incoherent babbling by now.

He was tired, so tired. He couldn’t speak anymore.

When she felt his hand become limp, she knew that was it.

“Él se fue.”

********

I pierced the earth with the shovel, pulling out a clump of caked earth and throwing it to the side. The ground was malleable, giving into the shovel without much protest. I sunk it in again, making fast work of it.

“Holy shit…” She breathed.

It was pale and slightly wrinkled, and even though the dirt, I could see the veins. The surprise shook me. It was a white hand, and I could already see it was larger than my own. This wasn’t my mother, and from the looks of it, the body was intact. Who was I digging up?

All the questions I had could only be solved by continuing.

After moving above the hand, I got the arm uncovered. It was thick and muscular, the veins continuing through it. I’d seen that grave. Moss and rotten sticks. This body hadn’t been buried recently. This should have decayed by now, but instead it looked…alive.

Not the face. Save that for last. Can’t deal with that yet.

I moved to the other side where the arm might be. After sinking the shovel into the ground, the tip of it hit something. There.

“What the fuck? What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?” I whispered.

The reality of the situation began to dawn on me. I was digging up someone I didn’t know. When I thought of the consequences, I could accept it when it was my own mother. She was mine, I was hers. I could justify disrupting her grave. This person was not mine to do that to. This is what my father meant.

But I was sent here. Destiny said I would make all the right decisions. Maybe they weren’t morally right, but somehow, still right? I couldn’t wrap my head around it right now. I had to finish this, and hope that it what Destiny saw.

It was a man. I didn’t have time to look at him now that he was exposed to the elements. But what I did get to observe as I lifted him up and placed him into the bag, was that he strong when he was alive. He was heavy—not the first dead person I’ve carried, probably not the last. But he was twice as heavy as he looked. I was lucky I had strength of my own to carry him with. I also looked at his face when I closed the bag. I saw his shirt had a gigantic gash in it, it was stained with dirt and discolored around the tear. Blood. But his face didn’t match what I assumed was his mortal wound. He was at peace. He looked like he was sleeping, possibly having a pleasant dream from the slightly upturned corners of his mouth.

As I zipped him up, I heard something. My skin told me it was time to go.


End file.
